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Monetization

We recently looked at the performance of an offerwall in one of our mid-core titles and found it’s primarily utilized by non-payers and found a significant boost in the purchase rates of non-payers who engage with an offerwall, with no negative impact to retention or gameplay rates. Generally speaking, it’s almost all additive revenue! Offerwalls are typically placed in the game store and reward users with hard currency for completing an offer of the user's choice. Offers can range from simple "watch a video" to things like getting an insurance quote or subscribing to Netflix. The offerwall rewards are usually tiered based on the complexity of the offer. Game developers set the exchange rate of the offers to an appropriate value of their hard currency. Player Engagement Engagement with the offerwall averages between 0.5% and 1.0% of users. Players engage with more offerwalls as they age, which is a function of those users having reason to visit the store looking for added currency and boosts. By user type, the majority of engagement with the

Advertising in games has proven to be a great source of revenue for game developers. In many cases, ads increase the revenue baseline and provide the ability to monetize genres that historically hadn’t monetize before, such as endless runners and roguelikes. In preparation for Kongregate’s presentation at Casual Connect, we did a deep dive into the performance of ads in most of our titles. With only 20 minutes to present, we were only able to cover the highlights, which left out a lot of additional information and data worth sharing. Rewarded Video These are “opt-in” video ads that a player chooses to watch. Unlike interstitial videos that automatically appear at predetermined locations and cadences, the decision to watch a rewarded video is in the player’s hands. In exchange for watching the video, players will get a reward in the game. This can be any type of reward. Today, rewarded videos are the most popular ad types, providing both high payouts (CPMs), a lot of inventory and high player engagement, all resulting in higher revenue potential. Player Engagement

Emily spoke today at the Game Developer's Conference, taking a looked at so-called "whales": players who spend thousands of dollars on free-to-play games. Using Kongregate web and mobile data and individual case studies she shows who they are and what they're buying, and then goes on to examine them within the larger context of games, and how economics, psychology, and social factors are shaping (and distorting) how we view these crucial players.

This morning Emily Greer (our COO) gave a presentation at Casual Connect San Francisco diving deep both into the economics that drive virtual goods purchases in games and advice on how to get monetization right. The talk builds on previous talks with new data, case studies, and analysis. Check it out below: Any additional questions? Let us know below.

Kongregate's Emily Greer presented a talk at GDC Online 2012 delving into the underlying economics of virtual goods and how developers should think about item pricing and promotions. You can find the full talk in the GDC vault, the slides are available below. Maximizing Monetization in Free to Play Games from emily_greer

Watch Kongregate's Emily Greer well-received talk at Casual Connect "Newbie to Big Spender: Understanding the Player Lifecycle." You can download the slides and find more great content from all the speakers at Casual Connect's website.

Watch Kongregate's Emily Greer and Anthony Pecorella presentation of "Numbers Backed Strategies for Virtual Goods Monetization" featuring examples and best practices to maximize game value. Discussion topics include pricing, analyzing LTV, and retention strategies. (Skipping ahead might cause a delay.) Here's more on Kongregate's developer program if you're interested in how we work with developers.